Experience Manifesto

Project Natal - MS Brings Motion Control to XBox 360

The long rumored motion controller for the XBox 360 was announced yesterday and so far everyone seems pretty psyched with it. Much like our AudienceGames In-Cinema Experience, they are using motion capture to make you the game controller. Of course, Project Natal is a lot more advanced then what we've been doing in cinema, where we have look at a whole audience of people, and they also added facial & voice recognition, which should add some really cool experience options to what they're doing.

We're just at the beginning of see a entirely new way to engage the computer, in this case for gaming. After all, the QWERTY keyboard that we use today was really created back in the late 1800's and it really is time for a new interface. And in terms of games, both at home and in arcades, this kind of technology will continue what Wii started by bringing in people who might not have been game players before, as well as create new forms of game experiences that we haven't even thought of yet.

Remember, if you want to learn about multitouch, you can join us tomorrow night at Multitouch Maven at the Clo Wine Bar at the Time Warner Center at 7.

Looking around this morning, here's some of the coverage Project Natal received:

Dave Rudden over at GamePro got a demo of Natal and wrote about it at Preview : Milo, Burnout, and Balls: Body-on with Project Natal [Xbox 360] - from GamePro.com.

My first taste of Natal was Ricochet, the hyper-active block-breaking game, demoed by the face of Natal and former Fight Night developer, Kudo Tsunoda. Kudo gave us a brief intro and showed us the ropes before letting the press serve up some damage. I didn't quite get as active as the hyperactive Microsoft employee, or even the surprisingly nimble Kudo, but my first taste of Natal served as proof-this device works. It recognized how far I was from the TV, and limb and head movements were almost instantaneously recognized on TV. Plus, the game once again rocked Ratatat on the soundtrack-they're a very gaming-influenced instrumental band that are definitely work checking out.

CNET has a good overview of both what it can do and the challenges that Microsoft faces in getting Natal to the masses at Microsoft's Project Natal: What does it mean for game industry? | Gaming and Culture - CNET News.

So is Project Natal Microsoft's answer to the Wii-mote?

"And beyond, yeah," said Forrester principal analyst Paul Jackson. "Obviously, we've all got, in the game industry...a huge debt to pay to Nintendo for shaking things up a bit with the Wii, and for moving beyond the 37 button controller. This is taking things to the next extreme. Because even with the Wii, you still have (several) buttons, start and select. It's still a physical controller."

Added Jackson, Project Natal looks likely to "remove that final barrier between you sitting in your room and...what's on your screen."

They also got a good quote from Steven Spielberg:

"I've been asking the crucial question: how can interactive entertainment become as approachable as other forms of entertainment?" Spielberg said. "The vast majority of people are just too intimidated to pick up a video game controller...Despite the size of (the video game) industry, still 60 percent of households do not own a video game console...The only way to bring interactive entertainment to everybody is to make it invisible." (BTW, here's what I said in '95 -- The first lesson for using any technology in marketing, he says, is to make the technology invisible and work on the content, not forgetting that people like to have fun. Not only do I sometimes look like him, I'm just as smart, damn it!)

Matt Peckham said Microsoft's No-Controller "Natal" Steals the Show - PC World. He continued:

What we saw today was unprecedented: True 1-to-1 motion tracking. Wave your arm and your onscreen avatar follows you precisely. Bend, yoga-like, to form cute animal shadow-shapes and a silhouetted image on a virtual canvas curls and contorts picture-perfectly. Shift toe-to-toe, tennis-like, anticipating objects hurled your way and whatever algorithms are intelligently sorting behind the scenes recognize your intentions, filtering out flailing limbs or ignoring unnecessary maneuvers.

Robert Winters has a good overview of how it works at Project Natal, how it could work and it's worth a quick review if you'd like to see some speculation about the technology and the various components involved.

They were equally as excited over at Gizmodo - Xbox 360 Project Natal: Full-Body Motion Control One-Ups the Wii - Project Natal, where they said:

What makes this so damned cool is that it lets you do more than just play games with it. You can also move through menus by swiping your hands back and forth. The camera allows for fun features like facial and voice recognition. When you have it running, your Xbox will recognize your face and sign you in automatically.

You can start to imagine the possibilities already. Everything from Minority Report style menu control to Dance Dance Revolution games that require you to actually dance rather than just hit buttons to videoconferencing in your living room, the thing just feels like the future. And it already makes the Wii seem like a gimpy and outdated piece of tech. There's no way it can touch what this will do.

Xbox.com | Project Natal.

Project Natal: amazing Xbox 360 controller-free gaming (E3) - Computerworld Blogs.

Microsoft announces "Project Natal" motion controller for Xbox 360!.

Kotaku - Spielberg: Natal Changes The Way I Write For Games - E3 2009. E3 2009: Microsoft's No-Controller "Natal" Steals the Show - PC World.

Procrastineering - Project blog for Johnny Chung Lee: Project Natal.

Microsoft's 'Project Natal' Is Vaporware, At Least Until Their E3 Booth Opens (MSFT).

Experience Manifesto: Is AudienceGames a Social Media?.

QWERTY - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Multitouch Maven

Jonathan Brill has put together a new multitouch group and they're hosting their first event this Wednesday, June 3rd, at the Clo Wine Bar at the Time Warner Center. There's some video of Clo below and it should be an interesting event. You can go to Discussion About Designing Multitouch Interfaces at Clo Wine... - Eventbrite for registrations for this free event. Hope that you'll be able to join us!

Please join us for some great wine and a discussion about designing multitouch interfaces at Clo Wine Bar, the first major permanent multitouch installation in New York. In addition to Jonathan Brill, speakers include:

• Jared Schiffman, Principal, Potion Design. Jared will talk about designing Clo's interactive tables.
• Brian Smith, Manager of Clo. Brian will talk about how the interactive tables impact the service experience
• William Henry, Former sommelier at Daniel and Rouge Tomate. William take us on a tasting journey through the virtual wine country
• David Palinchock, Retail Experience Guru. David will talk about the design and layout of the customer experience

Multitouch Maven.

ITP Spring Show 2009

Last night, Sydney & I went to the ITP Spring Show 2009 at NYU and, as always, we not only had a great time, but we saw lots of cool things as well. Here are just a few of the highlights. For the 1st time since I've been going to the ITP show, I actually didn't get to see the entire place, so make sure you go to their web site and see everything created this semester. You can also go to ITP Spring Show ‘09 photos to see some of the pictures I took of the show. picture

MudTub

This was a very cool project exploring a very unique interface to play games and explore. Here's what Tom Gerhadt has to say about the Mud Tub:

By sloshing, squishing, pulling, punching, etc, in a tub of mud (yes, wet dirt), users control games, simulators, and expressive tools; interacting with a computer in a new, completely organic, way. Born out of a motivation to close the gap between our bodies and the digital world, the Mud Tub frees the traditional computer interaction model of it’s rigidity, allowing humans to use their highly developed sense of touch, and creative thinking skills in a more natural way.

As you can see by the video below of Sydney playing, it's a pretty engaging way to play computer games. But, as I said to Tom last night, I also thought that it would be a really cool way to let children learn physics, earth science and science in general. I can tell you that it was Sydney's favorite experience of the night. You can go to Tom Gerhardt | Mud Tub to learn more about the project and what Tom sees happening in the future.

Tugg of War

Another Sydney favorite was the Tugg of War. We saw a couple of experiences that involved using the cell phone as the tool to create a group experience and this was one of the game experiences. Tuug of War

A Fish This Big

Sydney & I also went fishing at ITPlease » Blog Archive » a tale of a whale…fish. It was a cool augmented reality piece about the storytelling behind the big fish. In addition to fish, Sydney & I also caught the Yellow Submarine. You can go to the Fish This Big photo page for some additional pictures of my & Sydney.

We focused on color tracking and Virtual Fish is the product of wanting to tell someone a story of how large a fish is that they caught. We used color tracking to track two green squares and based on the distance between the two squares we inserted a different fish. As the person pulls their hands apart, the fish, in turn, gets larger and changes species as it grows. Images are capture and later the person is able to see the different types of fish that they caught.

Shakers

Although the real name of this project is Shakers, Sydney and her new found friend Molly called it Population. In their minds, they were creating life forms on the plates and they needed to keep shaking the different colors onto the plates to keep the populations growing. As you can see, Sydney & Molly had a lot of fun, even if they didn't quite get the original concept.

The inspiration of "Shakers" (spice bottles) is not for seasoning food but for flavoring creations. Whereas they lose their practicality, they gain other identities to create visions and scents. Powder is supposed to be tiny particles of earth or seeds of organisms consisting of a certain pattern of generation. Audience can play them by shaking bottles onto the plates. Each shaker embodies different rule sets of creations that generate granules, their reactions, syntheses, and their collapse and disappearance. It is also embedded with scent dispenser that disperses different smell of earth. As audience sprinkle different shakers, they generate images of particles and dispersethe scent of organisms such as earth, decaying leaves, wood and flower.Expectantly, those collective smells formulate a forest-like atmosphere playing with genetic visuals and eventually it could craft more memorable experiences.

Body Beats

Body Beats is a musical wall sequencer that lets people create a melody using their body. Each person participates in the piece by using their body to play a single note. This encourages a group to cooperate together in making a composition. It uses face recognition to find where people are situated on the wall, and what types of notes they represent. Try it out and bring your friends!

MAKE TV

Just saw this, so thought that I would put it here as well.

MAKE was at the ITP Spring Show 2009 earlier this week. This is a compilation video of just some of the cool projects that were on display. Later in the week I will be writing about some of my favorite projects in more detail. More at: Make: Online : ITP Spring Show 2009 video compilation.

YouTube - Lady Gaga - Poker Face (Level 01)

Just came across this game concept on youtube and thought that it was pretty cool. You actually do have to pay attention to the videos to score and move to the next level. It would certainly get me to watch more videos and it's the first program I've seen like this, I'm sure it won't be the last!

Everyone loves music videos. Artistry, vision, choreography, music. But are you really watching? Stop, pay close attention and find out for yourself. 15 Levels, 15 Challenges, and it gets tricky.

Presenting the first ever interactive music video challenge. With the latest and most popular videos from Lady Gaga, Soulja Boy, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more, "Don't Miss A Beat" tests your attention to detail one music video at a time. So ask yourself again, are you really watching?The Game Starts Here:

YouTube - Lady Gaga - Poker Face (Level 01).

:: Come Out & Play 2009 ::

Bummed because I'm realizing that I'll miss the Come Out & Play festival this year. But, I'll be in Amsterdam, so I guess I'll have to figure out a way to play from there! But, if you're going to be anywhere near the city June 12 - 14, you should check them out! It's always a great event and lots of fun.

Come Out & Play in New York City on June 12-14, 2009

Come Out & Play is happy to announce that we're turning New York City into a playground yet again! The festival will run from June 12-14. The Tank, a wonderful non-profit arts space, will play host and serve as our central headquarters. This gives all Come Out & Players easy access to nearly every subway line, Times Square, Hudson River piers and pedestrian greenways along the West Side Highway, and of course Manhattan's crown jewel - Central Park. We're going to have such a great time!

:: Come Out & Play 2009 ::.

Experience Manifesto: Super Happy Fun Big City Bingo.

Lego Augmented Reality

Our friends at Metaio have done some very cool things with augmented reality, including the Mini print campaign last year. They just sent over this cool video of work that they're doing for Lego, kiosks that will let you see 3D models of the completed Lego toy. AR's been recently used by GE and Living Sasquatch and we're only at the beginning. As AR gets more common, especially as it gets added to cell phones, we will start to see some really exciting applications. Mark my word, when Sydney, who is 8 now, is in high school, she'll be using AR in some form every day. For brands, the ability to combine the real world with the virtual is an untapped area of creativity. It will come with real challenges, like creating content that people will want. While there's a novelty factor right now, people will expect a lot more in the future. The experiences that we create will have to have a lot more entertainment or utility value, but if they're just marketing pitches, people won't do them.

If you haven't experienced AR yet, drop me an e-mail and i'll bring some demos to you.

Video: WiiSpray lets virtual taggers spray without fear of the man

When we first caught a whiff of the virtual aerosol action promised by Martin Lihs' thesis at Bauhaus University, dubbed WiiSpray, we were intrigued, but we never figured the end product would be this impressive. Lihs has since posted up a short teaser trailer showing the wall in action, controlled by a modified Wiimote controller, with results that should make even the most law-abiding artist smile. The video below shows an extensive color picker tool, interactive stencils, and what looks to be a perfectly accurate spray pattern -- and it should be, as the whole is getup is sponsored by Montana Cans. We're not sure what's next for this technology, but hopefully Lihs and his creation will be bombing a more public location soon.

WiiSpray Teaser from Martin Lihs on Vimeo.

Video: WiiSpray lets virtual taggers spray without fear of the man.

GPS Films

Catching up on my tweets this morning and came across this originally posted by the folks at ydreams (yea, I'm going through their entire twitter feed because they have so many cool ideas listed there!). So here's the deal, it's a location based movie, where your location is both the scene of what you're watching and the trigger for watching the scene. How cool is that! We are so only beginning to tap into these new tools to create stories and way too often, we're just doing the same old stuff using new tools. But think about the content you can create with a city as both the location and the trigger. It could be huge for branded content and I'm guessing that people would really take to it.

Need to really look more deeply into this subject and write a longer piece in the near future.

GPSFILM "The Using Of" from GPSFILM on Vimeo.

Location based mobile cinema - Fast Forward - FWD:labs.

Our friends over at ydreams are doing some very cool things playing in augmented worlds, as this video shows. We're big fans of this kind of work and we're certain that we'll see a lot more of it in the future. Hey, folks at Nickelodeon, you should turn this into a virtual slime experience for people to play on their computers. Bet people would have a lot of fun with it!

Playing in an Augmented World from YDreams on Vimeo.

MassivelyNetworked: What happens as marketing gets truly interactive?

Some good coverage of several SXSW sessions about the future of marketing, and, yours truly gets some press! Liked what Pamela had to say was her key takeaway:

My takeaway is these trends are likely to dramatically alter where, how, what and to whom we market products and services in the near future - and, most importantly, why we do it.

We've been trying to get this message to our clients for a number of years. And when you start seeing things like the Sixth Sense work from MIT (see video below for some damn cool video of this project), you can't help but wonder how all of this technology will impact what we do in the advertising industry. And you add ubiquitous computing, and you're talking about some game changing experiences.

Read the whole piece to get Pamela's take on how all of these technologies will create great opportunities for us folks in the advertising industry in the future.

As Polinchock said of traditional retail, "Physical retail experience has to deliver more than price and product." If retailers don't evolve to compete with applications such as Amazon's iPhone app that allows you to enter a brick and mortar, take a picture, price compare and purchase online, they will become "stupidly expensive websites." To survive, physical stores will have to provide some valuable service or experience that can't easily be found online. In Polinchock's view, it's a matter not of creating just brand awareness, but "brand utility."

MassivelyNetworked: What happens as marketing gets truly interactive? .

Experience Manifesto: TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense -- Video | Epicenter from Wired.com.